Misty: I'm here with Nikki, and she has got a story about love.

Nikki: Yes. I love my girlfriend. So this happened in undergrad. When I was at the University of Michigan. So I lived in a cooperative home.

Misty: What does that mean?

Nikki: So it's, I would always say that it's a sorority, but full of hippies.

Misty: Oh. And, and co-ed. Uh-oh.

Nikki: Yeah, and so like it was myself and 22 other people living in one home. Yeah. It was part of this program at the University of Michigan called the Inter Cooperative Council. It's got like 13 houses, I think, varying like anywhere from 12 people in a home to like 200 in like a multi-story complex on North campus, which is  the engineering campus. That house was called Escher. They're weird. People are gonna hate me if they ever hear this in the ICC, if any Escher person hears this (laughing). 

But Zoe and I lived at the Eugene V. Debs Cooperative home. Twelve rooms, 23 people. If you do the math, that's like seven doubles and only six singles. So 13 rooms, according to my math. The first day she moved in was like August of that year, and I was sitting on the porch and her parents and like her sister all came to help her move in.

And I leaned over the fence and I was like, "Hey, like, welcome to Debs, like it's your first day." And she was like, really pretty, but I had heard that she  had a boyfriend, and I was like, okay. Like she's straight. I have like, no chance with this woman. Like, it's whatever.

As the months go by, we had like a, we had a long conversation about art one day. That's where she first talked about Klimt. And I was like, oh my gosh. I've never actually studied Klimt before. I'd never looked his work up-- and I did with her.  And it fit just, like aesthetically-–like looking at her. She's very stereotypically German, blonde hair, blue eyes, very, very fair complexion. I was like, oh, this is like a very European art movement to be a fan of. 

And we wound up talking until like midnight, so she gets back at 10. She's really tired, but somehow I rope her into talking about art. To this day she does not remember this conversation. And it makes me so sad because it was the first time that I like, really had contact with her, because she was like in and out of the house all the time. She's a very diligent woman.

Misty: But you had been wanting to have contact.

Nikki: Yeah. Yea, but she had  her own friend group, like her, her sister, her twin –  they're like, very close. So she would frequently hang out with her and her friends rather than the people in the home. But then like January comes around, and she breaks up with her boyfriend.

Nikki: It was like a four year relationship. It was like a long relationship.

Misty: Especially that young.

Nikki: I know. I know, right? But spring break comes along. It's like late February, early March, because like the University of Michigan is so messed up and they have us have spring break, [in] like late February.

Misty: In the snow.

Nikki: Yeah. In the snow. So our friend group wanted to go to Teton National Park. Teton National Park in February is really cold still. Teton National Park from Ann Arbor, Michigan is a 22 hour drive.

So instead we go to “the next best thing” in quotes. You can't see the quotes, but in quotes. We go to fucking Appalachia, which still cold. Like, you know, maybe 10 degrees warmer than Teton in February.

We got like a 10 person Airbnb. It was frankly lovely. There were two queen beds. One single bed, one couch, one like, weird cot thing? No, there were two couches and we had 10 people. If you're doing the math, that means that multiple people had to share beds. 

But the first night, somehow I was in a queen bed alone. And the other queen bed had my girlfriend, Zoe, and two of my housemates in it. And like they all slept together in that bed, which was large, but for three people, like, it quickly becomes small. So the next morning they were complaining about how bad their sleep was the previous night.

And I was kind of just sitting there going like, well, do I want to revoke my privacy? And I was like, “I guess one of you can sleep in my bed. Like it's fine.” 

And they were like, “Oh, yay! We'll see who draws the shortest straw.” And that was the joke for the rest of the day. We're gonna be like, “Okay, whoever gets the shortest straw gets to sleep with Nikki.” It was like a funny verbiage thing. Internally, I was crossing my fingers, hoping it would be Zoe to get the spot.

So they draw and then Zoe gets it. So she moves into my room, and I was rubbing my hands like a super villain. I was like, “oh my gosh, it's Zoe!”  

And I asked her if she…I was like,”Do you want to form a wall of pillows?”  I was like, “I can respect this boundary.” And then she was like, “No, it's, it's fine. Like, I know that you're gonna be normal.” And I was like, “Yeah, that's true.” And it was crushing.

But, I was also like, this is someone that I have to live with in the house. And like, I had already dated someone in the home the previous year and it ended terribly. It was really awkward whenever we'd be in the same room. So I was like, fuck. Like this is a big risk. I don't want to ruin anything. 

But, I was in the middle of reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, which if you know anything about The Picture of Dorian Gray, it's extremely like gay text, you know, written by Oscar Wilde. And it was really funny, because at night I would read her excerpts from Dorian Gray.

Misty: They're always flinging themselves on the sofa.

Nikki: Yeah, yeah. They were, they were always like, gazing at one another like so, so intricately.

Misty: Very queer text, for sure.

Nikki: Very queer text. And I think Zoe got the message because we started flirting after [that], like, when we would go on hikes… So we would like somehow just always end up next to each other and just like,  chatting about whatever. And as the months went by, we started courting each other a little bit more. We would go on study dates, and we would try our best to make it clandestine because remember my ex is in this home. Like per square footage, we had the most people in the smallest home. So it was extremely hard to keep that a secret. 

Zoe lived on the third floor. This is a comical, like physical situation. Zoe lived on the third floor, and I lived in the basement. So to go down to my room, Zoe would have to walk down all the stairs. So like, Zoe had to always watch out to see if anyone was in the hallway before she went.

It was so silly how secret we were making it. But yeah, that's, that's the story of how we first met and now it's been two years.

Misty: Did your housemates find out eventually?

Nikki: They did find out. There were many jokes about the two of us being together. And then I only learned about this later when Zoe was telling the story to friends -- in the middle of the night, my arm draped across Zoe's body. And she did not move it. And she said that she was very happy that night.

Misty: Was that when you were on the holiday?

Nikki: That was when we were on the holiday, yeah. Ah, yeah. It was before we started dating. I had just put my arm around her. Apparently it was instinctual. I don't know... Yeah, the body knew things that I didn't maybe... But yeah, that's how we started dating.

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.